What is the best software for efficiently managing an online AV rental company, including inventory, bookings, and scalable operations?

My first question is "How do you monetize your blog?" If you don't know, then there's not much I can do for you right now. See, how you intend to monetize will drive the pre-qualification of readers. Meaning, who do you attract? If you monetize by having a store section, or sponsorship by retailers who sell online (who either pay you for advertising space or give you affiliate payments for customers you send over), then you definitely want readers who have demonstrated a comfort zone with buying clothes online. Otherwise, why bother? It's a too-uphill battle. Sure, you can get the readers, but then they won't buy because sourcing clothes online makes them nervous. If your blog gives them printable coupons they can walk into a physical retail store with, then you needn't worry about that. Though now, your concern is attracting readers who are local to these outlets. Nobody is going to drive 1000 miles to save 15% on a new suit. You really need to understand what you want your readers to DO before you begin producing content and attracting visitors. Otherwise, you'll spend your resources on the wrong things. Who do you partner with? What branding do you want? There's a huge difference between big and tall Men's Wearhouse and big and tall Versace. This goes for any readers of this answer who are tempted to ask a question: please provide more information in your write-up. We're not mind readers. We can't look into a crystal ball and see your exact situation. Give us more to work with, so we can provide a more detailed answer. We want to help you. And to do that, we need to know about your situation. A single descriptor sentence is not enough.

NIcole is right. When I first started my business I thought I was saving money by doing my own bookkeeping. It took me much longer than it would take a bookkeeper - all time that I was not spending on marketing or billable activities. And in the end I made errors which made the initial work of the bookkeeper longer. I now have a consistent routine. My bookkeeper picks up all my material monthly and does my books in less than 2 hours. Very worthwhile.

Budget is definitely important for a successful business, but it is not everything! As a young entrepreneur, I started a similar business earlier in my career selling eyeglasses on eBay. I created an eBay store, worked on advertising, and was fortunate with my results. I would love to speak with you about starting a website and marketing effectively to consumers with a very small budget. The biggest recommendation I can provide is to test different services at a low budget to see what works. Rather than spending thousands of dollars on a marketing agency, there are many services that can help your iPhone case business in marketing effectively. Feel free to reach out to me!

I think differently about this, because of two reasons: 1) I've always (and only) been involved in bootstrapped startups; and 2) I've been lucky that those startups grew organically and fast (enough) which minimized our need on marketing spend. Instead of deciding on a specific budget for this, I would instead look at your current priorities (in terms of budgeting and re-investment into your team): 1. Build a great team. 2. Build a great product. 3. Craft incredible customer experiences. 4. Spend money on marketing. If you've already hit all 3 top priorities and you can't reinvest any further into those, then you should start spending money on marketing. If you don't have revenues today and you are hoping to generate revenues through marketing spend, you're on slippery slope (says the bootstrapper). Whilst not wrong, this is tricky and you'd need to take a realistic look at your customer acquisition cost (CAC) and how much you can invest into acquiring new customers.

Cash money should be treated separately than sweat equity. There are practical reasons for this namely that sweat equity should always be granted in conjunction with a vesting agreement (standard in tech is 4 year but in other sectors, 3 is often the standard) but that cash money should not be subjected to vesting. Typically, if you're at the idea stage, the valuation of the actual cash going in (again for software) is anywhere between $300,000 and $1m (pre-money). If you're operating in any other type of industry, valuations would be much lower at the earliest stage. The best way to calculate sweat equity (in my experience) is to use this calculator as a guide: http://foundrs.com/. If you message me privately (via Clarity) with some more info on what the business is, I can tell you whether I would be helpful to you in a call.